QuoteReplyTopic: About Russian language: its difficulties Posted: 14-Feb-2009 at 21:34

Originally posted by gcle2003

Originally posted by Sarmat

Originally posted by Arekushii

It just takes time to get used to things, common in Russian, like inversions na poljane krasivoj derevo raslo (inversion, while normal sentence: na krasivoj poljane raslo derevo) - A tree was growing in a beautiful meadow; and stuff like that :p

I believe this is a grammatic influence of Uralo-Altaic languages. Including Finno-Ugrian ones .

It's common in English, though it sounds poetic.

"In the beautiful meadow a tree grew", "In the beautiful meadow (there) grew a tree", "There grew in the beautiful meadow a tree", "There grew a tree in the beautiful meadow" are all perfectly acceptable English, usually because the speaker is trying for a specific effect.

And of course you could put it any way around that you like in Latin.

So with regard to difficulty you have to state what language you are coming from.

It is not exactly what Arekushii implied. You cant's say in English "In the meadow beautiful gree a tree" can you?. In Russian you can. It will mean exactly the same as "In the beautiful meadow..." although a bit poetic.

The one I had in mind was the one with Robert Newton, who was genuinely a west countryman (from Dorset), and 'pirate talk' is a kind of West Country dialect since that's where all the best pirates came from (indeed most of the best admirals, except for Nelson )

I haven't seen the others, but Newton established the stereotypical figure. Like Charles Laughton is the stereotypical Henry VIII.

Citizen of Ankh-Morpork
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied - Sir Humphrey Appleby, 1984.

It just takes time to get used to things, common in Russian, like inversions na poljane krasivoj derevo raslo (inversion, while normal sentence: na krasivoj poljane raslo derevo) - A tree was growing in a beautiful meadow; and stuff like that :p

I believe this is a grammatic influence of Uralo-Altaic languages. Including Finno-Ugrian ones .

It's common in English, though it sounds poetic.

"In the beautiful meadow a tree grew", "In the beautiful meadow (there) grew a tree", "There grew in the beautiful meadow a tree", "There grew a tree in the beautiful meadow" are all perfectly acceptable English, usually because the speaker is trying for a specific effect.

And of course you could put it any way around that you like in Latin.

So with regard to difficulty you have to state what language you are coming from.

It is not exactly what Arekushii implied. You cant's say in English "In the meadow beautiful gree a tree" can you?. In Russian you can. It will mean exactly the same as "In the beautiful meadow..." although a bit poetic.

You can in English if you push it. It seems odd with 'beautiful' but reads better with the proper adverbial form 'beautifully grew the tree. 'In the evening sweetly smiles my love' sounds fine: if no-one's written it yet, they probably will, but it actually sounds tantalisingly familiar.

In poetry, even Strom na poÄ¾ane rÃ¡stol krÃ¡snej. and Strom na krÃ¡snej rÃ¡stol poÄ¾ane. can be accepted. Only Strom na rÃ¡stol poÄ¾ane krÃ¡snej. can never be correct.

You don't declinate in Bulgarian anymore, do you??

Some of this illustrates another difference that sometimes causes problems - the lack of definite/indefinite article. Also, though it may be coincidental here, there doesn't seem to be any difference between 'The tree in the meadow grew beautifully' and 'the tree in the meadow grew beautiful' since either appears to translate "Strom na poÄ¾ane rÃ¡stol krÃ¡snej".

Also does Strom na poÄ¾ane krÃ¡snej rÃ¡stol translate 'The tree in the meadow grew beautiful or 'The tree in the meadow grew beautifully' or 'The tree in the beautiful meadow grew' (all three of which are permissible English variants with different meanings - i.e. which is beautiful, the meadow or the tree, or the way it is growing? Would your diffeerent word orders affect the meaning in that way?

And then does 'grew' mean 'grew' as in 'getting bigger' or 'grew' as in 'becoming'? (ah the webs one weaves....)

Citizen of Ankh-Morpork
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied - Sir Humphrey Appleby, 1984.

Also does Strom na poÄ¾ane krÃ¡snej rÃ¡stol translate 'The tree in the meadow grew beautiful or 'The tree in the meadow grew beautifully' or 'The tree in the beautiful meadow grew' (all three of which are permissible English variants with different meanings - i.e. which is beautiful, the meadow or the tree, or the way it is growing? Would your diffeerent word orders affect the meaning in that way?

I suppose it is meadow that is beautiful even though 'beautiful' stands after 'meadow'.

You can determine to which words it is related by its ending (from Russian example):

Na poljane krasivoj derevo roslo (meadow is beautiful)

Na poljane krasivoe derevo roslo (the tree is beautiful)

Na poljane krasivo derevo roslo (the tree grew in a beautiful manner i.e. it is the process of growing that is beautiful)

Some of this illustrates another difference that sometimes causes problems - the lack of definite/indefinite article.

Yes, the realisation is then a bit different. Usually, if we want to express definiteness, we have to use demonstrative pronouns (so it would be ten strom).

Also, though it may be coincidental here, there doesn't seem to be any difference between 'The tree in the meadow grew beautifully' and 'the tree in the meadow grew beautiful' since either appears to translate "Strom na poÄ¾ane rÃ¡stol krÃ¡snej".

Actually, there is. KrÃ¡snej (with a dark N) is locative (or more better local) form of krÃ¡sna, the adverb would be krÃ¡sne (pronounced with a soft N, just like in Russian - the same distinction: dental ''dark'' D, T, N, L, and their palatal ''soft'' ÄŽ, Å¤, Å‡, Ä½ counterparts).

Also does Strom na poÄ¾ane krÃ¡snej rÃ¡stol translate 'The tree in the meadow grew beautiful or 'The tree in the meadow grew beautifully' or 'The tree in the beautiful meadow grew' (all three of which are permissible English variants with different meanings - i.e. which is beautiful, the meadow or the tree, or the way it is growing? Would your diffeerent word orders affect the meaning in that way?

Strom [strom] - tree

na [nÉ‘] - on (here's a difference between what preposition is used in Slovak and English)

The adverbial is krÃ¡sne [krÉ‘:sÉ²e], and just like in English it can be moved around more freely than the adjective.

Beautiful is the meadow. The word order wouldn't affect the meaning at all - a tree would still grow on a beautiful meadow. That's because of the declination and conjugation. So we would know that krÃ¡snej belongs to poÄ¾ane, because strom would need krÃ¡sny, and also we know that the tree grew, because it's in nominative and because of the verb form, ie. the form is what we call l-participle and since it's a participle, it's gender-specific (poÄ¾ane is F, strom M). The expression of past tense solely by a participle might seem strange to someone.

And then does 'grew' mean 'grew' as in 'getting bigger' or 'grew' as in 'becoming'? (ah the webs one weaves....)

My actual point, in line with the thread topic, is that I don't think word order presents difficulties to English people learning Russian, not compared to the difficulty of getting the various endings right. Going into Russian, English word order is , at least usually, OK, and coming from Russian odd word orders don't usually affect the meaning of the sentence.

Edited by gcle2003 - 01-Mar-2009 at 14:18

Citizen of Ankh-Morpork
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied - Sir Humphrey Appleby, 1984.

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